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Politics, The Final Frontier (Politics)
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Mick Harper
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Actually, American life expectancy did drop for the first time since records began. Slightly and briefly. British ones were talked of dropping but since this would have been headline news and wasn't, I presume they didn't.

When they talk of 'Victorian diseases returning' it is generally because of (a) Islamic habits of swathing women and thereby inducing a lack of Vitamin D and (b) resistance to routine childhood inoculations among immigrant populations. Whereupon the talk tends to peter out.

It has become a trope among trade union official defending the latest strike to claim their members are having to get second jobs. Since they do have jobs, and the actual cut in the standard of living has been a coupla per cent at most, this is a bit precipitate of them. However, I did hear the one about 'food or heating' the other day which, since it involved striking teachers, I assumed it was because of the money they were losing on strike days. But there's no reason why the kids can't have a whip round. We did it for lifeboatmen in my primary school so it wouldn't be a stretch.

PS Not heard the 'or keeping [the children] clean' one. Presumably this is because of the cost of running a post-Ukraine bath but I noticed that my favoured brand, Dove soap, was thruppence up so it may be that.
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Wile E. Coyote


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The USA's life expectancy fell from 2014-2019, ie before the pandemic, it's probably something to do with much higher levels of fatal injuries amongst the young (young deaths really hit the figures), drug overdoses, car accidents, home accidents, firearms etc. I suspect that it might have got a tad better during the pandemic (the risk takers are locked up?) but the figures go against me. What do I know?
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Mick Harper
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I hadn't realised that about the young though it's obvious enough. I had been fixated on child mortality since it is (was) the the elimination of the commoner childhood diseases via vaccination that had boosted the figures originally.

That hasn't been much of a factor as life expectancy has gone from mid-sixties to (you say) low eighties. What's that down to? Healthy living? I wouldn't want the health nazis to have been right.
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Grant



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Alexander Fleming
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Mick Harper
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the elimination of the commoner childhood diseases via vaccination that had boosted the figures originally. That hasn't been much of a factor as life expectancy has gone from mid-sixties to (you say) low eighties

Penicillin's eighty years ago, Grant. Get a grip. In fact all the antibiotics have (famously) run their course.
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Mick Harper
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And don't forget our discussion over on the Health thread about centenarians becoming a veritable plague. That's going up so fast I'm expecting to outlive my mum (100 when she popped) by a good ten years. "Yes, please, Mick." (The world.)
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Mick Harper
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It was good to see Trump back in the news. It was good to see Stormy Daniels back in the news. How one misses these splendid characters. It was less exciting, though doubtless more important, to see liberal lawmen in downtown Manhattan trying to nail the bum. (Donald Trump, I mean.) The world's news outlets devoted most of their airtime to the question, "Did he fill in the right form?" As it is not contested that he did not, he's looking at a substantial stretch at a federal facility near him.

What is it they say? "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime." Being president of the United States was a definite error of judgement on his part.
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Grant



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The United States is now officially a banana republic
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Mick Harper
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Not quite. The banana republics have been sliding downwards since the days when they were banana republics.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Grant wrote:
The United States is now officially a banana republic



It seems to Wiley that the Yanks really need a House of Lords or some such. There is really nothing for these ex-presidents to do on leaving office, so they have delusions of running again.

Maybe they could offer Trump Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, I mean President Taft gave it a go.
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Mick Harper
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The constitution-framers intended the Senate to be their House of Lords. Ceremonial, advisory and acting as a backstop to 'the mob' in the House of Commons/House of Representatives -- who were the only bodies that could authorise the spending of money i.e. have any real power. Hence grandee senators were given a six-year term and then were supposed to fade away and/or die.

Only the framers made a stoopid mistake. Representatives were given a two-year term and had to spend all their efforts on getting re-elected rather than framing laws for the country (et al). So the Senate took over the vacuum. Turning to the Supreme Court...
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Mick Harper
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On March 26, Honduras officially established diplomatic ties with China—bringing the number of diplomatic allies that Taiwan has to just 13. Agencies

China and Taiwan are engaged in a weird Paso Doble. Basically one turns up and offers various inducements to some stumblebum regime who gratefully accepts them. Then the other comes along and offers a bit more and they switch sides. Since China can do about a zillion times what Taiwan can do... well, you can see the result. Why Taiwan thinks it a good idea and why China even thinks it needs to do it is something else but I suppose it has something to with 'face' which, according to stereotype, is something that's big out east.

Since Taiwan, in a sense, doesn't even recognise itself -- they have wisely rejected the idea of declaring UDI -- they should just give it up and open commercial chargé d'affaires -- everyone needs Taiwanese computer chips, even China -- and save the money. They're too westernised to need to save face.
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Mick Harper
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Mick wrote:
The banana republics have been sliding downwards since the days when they were banana republics.

Anyone who watches Al-Jazeera nightly will know that it isn't just Central America, it's everywhere. It fills one with despair. The problem is presumably that everything gallops along technologically except the art of government. Everyone's got a mobile phone, nobody's got clean water. But they can see what they ought to have -- it blares at them for every channel from their colour TV's -- so they blame their government for not providing it.

It's really quite easy to solve. When we talk of third world government we're not referring to a quarter point on bank rate, sexism in the police or whether to extend the HS2, just utterly basic stuff to do with a stable currency, law and order and filling in pot holes. You can let the people do all the other stuff. But at the moment they can't because their governments can't do the basic stuff. Since they will happily import everything else from the first world, why can't they import government from the first world?

Our own guardians wouldn't allow it for a start. They're noble savages, doncha know.
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Mick Harper
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Sure, they won't accept it either but, remember, all their ideologies are imported from the first world (second world in the case of Islam) so until we've got this duck in a row they haven't got the choice. And why can't we? Racism of course. Until we take back racism from the racists we haven't got a prayer when it comes to helping other races.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Russia is threatening to bolster its defences along the Finland border as Finland joins Nato, presumably they will be using the ones they switched from the Finnish border to attack Ukraine?
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